


A Matter of Taste

by The_Lady_Crane



Series: IkeSoren Week 2021 [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: At least he tried, Cooking, Established Relationship, IkeSoren Week 2021, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Post-Canon, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28615491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Lady_Crane/pseuds/The_Lady_Crane
Summary: Ike was never much of a cook. Soren was never much of a gourmet. It works for them.---IkeSoren Week 2021Day 5: Cooking
Relationships: Ike/Senerio | Soren
Series: IkeSoren Week 2021 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2091183
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21
Collections: IkeSoren Week 2021





	A Matter of Taste

**Author's Note:**

> I'm ahead of schedule again. I know, I know. I'm suffering from a bad illness, though, and writing and posting keep me sane. I may just end up posting the rest of my stories for the week, too. 
> 
> Anyway, I always head-canon that Elena was a terrible cook, and that Ike and Mist both inherited her "skills". Soren, in my mind, would be a decent cook, simply because he follows the recipe to the letter. Cooking is science to him. But Ike... Poor Ike. lol He tries to feel his way through it, doing what he thinks will work rather than what he's been told to do, because that's how he saw Elena do it. He's like, "I can just throw this stuff in a pot, and it turns into soup". 
> 
> Then again, Soren grew up eating whatever he could find. I think that as long as Ike cooked it, he would eat it without complaints. Soren never learned a good taste from a bad one. I do head-canon that Soren likes sweet flavors, mainly because he would have enjoyed eating fruit when it was in season and growing freely in the forest. Also, his dragon-esque traits probably make him a bit more partial to blander flavors like undercooked meat. 
> 
> Oh, man. I am rambling. Sorry, on with the story!

Soren very rarely fell ill. Whether or not his laguz ancestry granted him immunity, Ike could only recount a few times when his strategist had gotten sick. Typically, as one of the only mercenaries to be unaffected when the yearly bout of cold made its rounds, Soren was the one taking care of everyone else. But this time, it seemed that the shoe was on the other foot. Ike was completely fine, but Soren had come down with a fever and a case of the sniffles.

“Ka-CHA!”

Also, a series of epic sneezes.

It would be just their luck that this would happen in the middle of nowhere, days after they had left the last village. Their map indicated that they weren’t too far out from another settlement, but it was rocky country, with harsh winds that blew day and night. Ike wouldn’t risk traveling with Soren like this, no matter how Soren tried to protest.

They settled beneath a craggy overhang of the mountainside, protected by tall pine trees and a few low shrubs. There was a clear stream nearby, and they were sheltered from the wind. With the tent erected, Ike was satisfied that Soren was well out of the elements.

“I should be fine to travel tomorrow,” Soren said, his voice nasal and stuffy. Ike ignored him. There wasn’t any point in arguing back.

“OK…” Ike mumbled to himself as he looked out over the area. Besides the few scatterings of trees here and there, it looked bare and foreboding. No good game in this place, then. He rummaged through their packs until he found a small book bound in tattered linen.

“Are you getting hungry?” Soren asked, eyeing the book blearily. It had been a parting gift from Mist – a collection of recipes meant to be cooked on the road, with minimal equipment and improvised ingredients. Soren had made heavy use of it during their travels.

“I’m cooking,” Ike said, already anticipating an argument. A sick Soren was an even more cantankerous one, and he insisted on doing everything for himself.

“I’ll do it,” Soren said, but Ike was already digging out the cooking pot and tripod.

“You’re gonna stay right there,” Ike said flatly.

“Ike, we don’t have any fresh meat to roast,” Soren groaned. “What exactly are you going to cook?”

“Are you saying I can’t do it?”

“No…” The sage sighed and rolled over on the bedroll. “But I don’t think we have the right ingredients to—” he was cut off by a coughing fit, and Ike leaned over to pat his back.

“You need something more than just jerky and hardtack,” Ike said. “Don’t worry, OK? I’ve got this under control.”

Soren nodded through the wracking coughs, and Ike helped him to settle before crawling out of the tent, cookbook in hand. He had found a recipe for stew that looked nourishing, and he figured that he could knock it together fairly easily.

First, there were ingredients to gather. Soren was correct in that they didn’t have all of the necessary things, but Ike decided to improvise. Rather than fresh meat, he would use the dried jerky – surely simmering it in a stew would soften it up a bit. For the vegetables, he found wild garlic and lemongrass. That would work.

But they also needed some kind of grain. They had a bit of flour, but would that be hearty enough? Ike found the little sack and shifted through it. He would need something thicker. Biscuits? He pulled them out of the pack and knocked two of them together. That would do – they’d soften up just the same as the jerky.

But then there was the matter of how to begin. The book was rather vague in some areas. He was instructed to sear the meat, but since it was already dried, was that necessary? He decided to play it safe and toast the pieces at the edge of the fire before putting them into the pot.

Speaking of which, how much water was he supposed to use, anyway? He frowned at the book, wondering how Soren always managed to get the proportions right. He opened his mouth to ask, but then checked himself. If Soren knew that he couldn’t even boil water, well… That wouldn’t bode well at all. Then the sage would have a precedent to put his rest on hold, and Ike couldn’t have that.

He decided to just fill the pot halfway and keep a bit more on hand just in case.

As if reading Ike’s mind, Soren called out from the tent, “Do you need any help?”

“No,” Ike said. “You need to rest. I know what I’m doing.”

Ike could remember, distantly, when his father had taken him and Mist camping during their childhood. Greil had known how to make all kinds of things on a campfire. His skill at cooking was even better than their mother’s (something that Ike had been advised to never mention aloud within earshot of Elena). Ike tried to remember how his father had done it. As much as he missed his mother, he hated to think that he had inherited her cooking skills.

“Ike…” A wheezing cough from the tent. “Don’t forget to… brown the garlic before adding the water…”

With a muttered curse, Ike dumped the water out of the pot. “I know that,” he said, grabbing a handful of garlic bulbs.

Soren hadn’t cooked a thing in his life until he’d joined up with the Greil Mercenaries. After that, as part of the chore rotation, his skills had grown. Oscar would even allow him to take over some dishes, while Ike was left peeling potatoes and cleaning the pots. “It’s very simple,” Soren had always said, citing the ease of following a recipe and the logical turnout when applying the principles of science to cooking.

Perhaps that explained why Ike was having such trouble now. He had never had much interest in science or magic. This he knew, as he looked into the pot twenty minutes later to find the garlic completely black. It smelled like charcoal and broken hope.

“Shit…” He began fishing out the worst pieces.

Soren had apparently fallen asleep, or else his sense of smell was completely shot. Either way, Ike hurried to cover his mistake, praying to the spirit of his father to intervene and guide him. “Please, don’t let me be as bad at this as Mist is…” Despite his pleading, Ike was starting to think that he was under some sort of family curse. The mixture in the pot, now filled with water and toasted jerky, was smelling exactly like his sister’s stew.

“OK. Jerky’s dry, so we need more water.” That sounded logical, didn’t it? Ike added more water to the pot, and then began crumbling up the hardtack. Science, he thought. Science and magic. Do one thing, and you get the desired effect. He wanted a nice, savory stew, so he would have to simmer it for a while. “Oh! Salt!” He dove for the food stores and rummaged around for the salt sack. He couldn’t forget about that. But how much was enough?

He was beginning to think that he’d pulled it off when he started to add the crumbled biscuits. The crumbs absorbed the water greedily, soaking up so much that the mixture began to resemble a dough rather than a stew. Ike frowned at it, stirring it with his spoon. Maybe more water would fix it. He added that, and then added the lemongrass. Then more salt, just in case.

With each turn of the wooden spoon, the concoction smelled worse and worse. Finally, Ike took it off of the fire. Scraping the bottom, he found that it had burned into some sort of cake-like texture, scorched in some parts as black as coal.

“What is that?” Soren asked, coming to sit beside him. Ike started; he hadn’t noticed Soren coming out of the tent.

“It’s supposed to be a stew,” Ike said, poking at the stuff with the spoon. “It didn’t really turn out that well, though…”

“Mm. It smells good, at least.” Soren pulled a couple of wooden bowls out of the pack.

“You want to eat it?”

“Yes, I do.” Soren held out his bowl. “May I?”

There was a good portion of rations in it, and Ike knew that they shouldn’t go to waste. He grimaced as he dipped up a portion for Soren, then one for himself. It smelled even worse when he held it up to his nose, and he could now see the black little specks of what had, at one time, been garlic.

He couldn’t help an incredulous grunt when Soren said, “It’s good.”

“You don’t have to spare my feelings,” Ike said, plopping his spoon into his bowl with a frown.

“I’m not.” Soren was taking careful bites of the “stew”, hardly waiting for it to cool. “It may not have the texture of stew, but it has the flavor. Even if it’s a bit burned, it’s nourishing.”

Ike’s first thought was to ask if Soren had absolutely no taste at all. But when he thought about it, Soren didn’t have much of a sense of what was good or bad. Growing up eating scraps, sometimes resorting to rotten offal from the streets, it was no wonder. Compared to that, this was surely a king’s feast.

“You don’t have to make yourself eat it,” Ike said softly, reaching out to take the bowl. More than the embarrassment was a sense of shame. Soren deserved better than this.

Soren looked genuinely confused as he held onto his bowl. “Ike, I really don’t mind it. Besides, you made it. So, it tastes good to me.”

Ike smiled at that. “So, if you don’t taste with your tongue, you taste with your heart, is that it?”

“Don’t be so cheesy.” Soren took another bite and took his time savoring it. “If it’s not to your taste, then you can have the dried meat.”

“I think I’ll do that.” Ike set aside his bowl, which to his surprise was immediately snatched by Soren. Digging out more jerky was a simple matter, and the two sat together for some time, focused on their meal. 

Soren was done long before Ike, which was unusual. He slumped against the taller man, and Ike slung an arm around his back, holding him close while he finished his own supper. The heat from Soren’s body warmed him, and a cool breeze played in their hair, cooling Soren’s fevered skin. “I’ll do better next time,” Ike murmured against Soren’s forehead.

“Mm.” Soren was already beginning to fall asleep.

“Maybe I’ll make a pie. Dad used to make great pies.”

“Mmm.”

“You think I could learn to cook like him someday?”

“Not a chance.” Soren leaned up and nuzzled against Ike’s jaw. “But I’ll always eat whatever you cook.”

Ike held onto Soren tightly. A man who couldn’t cook, and a man who couldn’t taste. They really were made for each other, he thought.


End file.
